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воскресенье, 8 марта 2015 г.

Outcry and fear as Pakistan builds new nuclear reactors in dangerous Karachi

By Tim Craig

World leaders have fretted for years that terrorists may try to steal
one of Pakistan’s nuclear bombs and detonate it in a foreign country. But some
Karachi residents say the real nuclear nightmare is unfolding here in
Pakistan’s largest and most volatile city.

On the edge of Karachi, on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to
tsunamis and not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan
navy vessel last fall, China is constructing two large nuclear reactors for
energy-starved Pakistan.

The new reactors, utilizing a cutting-edge design not yet in use
anywhere in the world, will each provide 1,100 megawatts to Pakistan’s national
energy grid. They are being built next to a much smaller 1970s-era reactor on a
popular beach where fishermen still build wooden boats by hand.

But the new ACP-1000 reactors will also stand less than 20 miles from
downtown Karachi, a dense and rapidly growing metropolis of about 20 million
residents.

Now, in a rare public challenge to the Islamabad government’s nuclear
ambitions, some Pakistanis are pushing back. Of all places to locate a reactor,
they argue, who could possibly make a case for this one?

“You are talking about a city one-third the population of the United
Kingdom,” said Abdul Sattar Pirzada, a Karachi lawyer who is seeking to get the
project halted. “If there would be an accident, this would cripple Karachi, and
if you cripple Karachi, you cripple Pakistan.”

In recommendations pertaining to nuclear plant construction in the
United States, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says a new reactor should
be sited away from very densely populated areas, preferably with fewer than 500
people per square mile within a 20-mile radius. That zone around Karachi’s
power plant holds about 6,450 people per square mile, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a
Pakistani nuclear physicist, wrote in Newsweek Pakistan last year.

Some U.S. diplomatic officials have also expressed concern about the
initiative, in particular about China’s role in providing nuclear technology to
Pakistan.

Caught off-guard by the opposition, political leaders have rushed to
defend one of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s top priorities — addressing the
country’s acute energy shortfall. Pakistan, one of the few developing nations
still pursuing civilian nuclear energy options since the 2011 Fukushima
disaster in Japan, has three operative nuclear power plants, including the
Canadian-built reactor in Karachi, but it has turned to China for help in
expanding its capacity. Efforts are underway to double the size of the Chashma
Nuclear Power Plant in northern Punjab province, as well as to build the new
Karachi reactors.

“The risks are there. You cannot discount them, but you prepare for
them,” said Khawaja Asif, Pakistan’s water, power and defense minister. “We are
a nuclear power, so don’t underestimate us.”

China developed the ACP-1000 reactor, which costs about $5 billion each
to build, after studying and refining the design of a reactor that France built
in China in the 1980s. The China National Nuclear Corp. is now supplying the
ACP-1000 reactor to Pakistan, despite an international ban on the transfer of
nuclear technology to Pakistan because of the country’s refusal to sign the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“We are going to be the guinea pigs,” said Arif Belgaumi, a Karachi
architect who wants the international community to pay closer attention to the
government’s plans.

China joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group — whose members agree not to
transfer to treaty non-signers any technology that could be used to develop a
nuclear weapon — in 2004. But it claims that it had already promised to help
Pakistan, allowing it to continue developing the reactors.

Beijing is helping Pakistan build reactors at the same time that the
Obama administration is trying to implement a 2008 deal that would smooth the
way for U.S. companies to invest in new nuclear power plants in India.
Pakistan’s chief rival has also balked at signing the nonproliferation treaty.
Both President Obama and former president George W. Bush have sought an
exception for India.

“China’s expanding civilian nuclear cooperation with Pakistan raises
concerns and we urge China to be transparent regarding this cooperation,” the
U.S. Embassy said in a statement Thursday.

Until now, Pakistani leaders have faced little public discontent over
the country’s nuclear ad­vances. After all, Pakistan celebrates a national
holiday each May marking the anniversary of its first atomic weapons test in
1998. But the country’s progressive movement is evolving, sparking novel
protests over environmental and public safety issues. And the prospect of
20-story reactors rising next to a public beach used for swimming, camel rides
and picnics is a vivid illustration of what’s at stake.

Though international monitors generally give Pakistan satisfactory
reviews for safeguarding nuclear materials, industrial accidents causing
hundreds of fatalities remain common here. There are concerns that Pakistani
technicians won’t be able to operate or maintain the Chinese nuclear
technology.

Karamat Ali, chairman of the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and
Research, noted that the world has already experienced three major nuclear
accidents — at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979 and Chernobyl in
the former Soviet Union in 1986, in addition to the Fukushima disaster.

“Those are three highly advanced countries,” Ali said. “This is
Pakistan. We don’t live on technology and science. In fact, we are quite
allergic to that.”

Of particular concern is the threat of terrorism, especially considering
Karachi’s long history of head-scratching security lapses­.

Terrorists overran a Pakistani naval base in Karachi in 2011, killing
five people and setting several aircraft on fire. A similar attack occurred in
June, but this time Pakistan Taliban militants stormed a section of Karachi
International Airport, killing about two dozen people. And in September,
al-Qaeda militants, perhaps with help from renegade sailors, attempted to
hijack a heavily armed Pakistan navy frigate docked in Karachi’s port. It took
hours for security forces­ to repel the assault.

If a major attack or accident were to occur at a nuclear power plant,
activists say there would be unimaginable chaos.

Karachi, whose population has doubled in just the past two decades,
includes vast, packed slums, as well as districts under the thumb of criminal
gangs and Islamic militants. And with more than 2.7 million registered cars,
buses, rickshaws and motorcycles, it can take hours to cross the city.

“You couldn’t even dream of evacuating Karachi,” said Hoodbhoy, the
physicist. “The minute an alarm was sounded, everything would be choked up.
There would be murder and mayhem because people would be trying to flee. Others
would be trying to take over their homes and cars.”

But Azfar Minhaj, general manager of Karachi’s reactor project, said
Pakistan sought the ACP-1000 reactor because it makes a radiation leak far less
likely. Each reactor will have a double containment structure capable of
withstanding the impact of a commercial airliner, he said, adding that there is
also an elaborate filtration system and that the reactor will be able to cool
itself for 72 hours without power.

“If a new car comes with an air bag, would you start thinking, ‘This is
a new feature, it’s never been tested in Pakistan, never built in Pakistan.
Should we use it or not?’” Minhaj asked.

Because of the enhanced safety features, Minhaj said, authorities are
planning for an impact zone no greater than three miles in the event of a
worst-case accident. Most of the affected residents would be asked to shelter
in place, not evacuate, he said.Hoodbhoy points out that even today, the no-go
zones around the Chernobyl and Fukushima plants are 18 and 12 miles,
respectively.

Minhaj said concerns about the effect of a tsunami are also overblown
because the new reactors are being built on a rock ledge about 39 feet above
sea level. Pakistan’s meteorological office recently concluded that Karachi
could face a tsunami of up to 23 feet in the event of a 9.0-magnitude
earthquake in the region.

Mark Hibbs, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, said he suspects that the new Chinese design is indeed
less prone to accidents. But he noted that most poorer countries have shied
from developing a nuclear energy footprint since Fukushima.

“If there was a lesson we learned from the Fukushima accident, it’s
that, if you are going to get into the nuclear business, and if you don’t have
world-class technology, good logistics, enough personnel, a lot of money and
experience managing crisis situations, then you are not going to be able to
manage a severe accident,” Hibbs said.

Zia Mian, a Pakistani physicist at the Program on Science and Global
Security at Princeton University who is also fighting the project, notes that
the existing Canadian reactor was designed in the 1960s to generate just 100
megawatts of electricity. The new reactors will produce 22 times that amount
and use a combined 40 to 60 tons of enriched-uranium fuel each, he said. And
each year, one-third of that spent fuel will also be removed from the core and
stored in large containment pools at the plant, Mian said.

“You put all of that together, and the hazards are unimaginably larger,”
he said.

After Sharif showed up in Karachi in December 2013 to break ground on
the new reactors, Pirzada and other activists began organizing against it on
Facebook. Last summer, they filed a lawsuit against the Pakistan Atomic Energy
Commission and the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority alleging that
construction began without a proper environmental impact study.

In December, a court halted vertical construction — but allowed
excavation work to continue — until a new environmental assessment is
completed, about a month from now. If major construction is then allowed to
resume, the reactors will have an expected life span of at least 60 years.

Musadaq Malik, a Sharif adviser on energy issues, counters that a
country that trusts its military to possess nuclear weapons can also trust its
government to maintain a Chinese nuclear power plant.

“We may look irresponsible, but we are not that irresponsible,” Malik
said. “We have engineers, we have scientists, we have our security apparatus. ... Like other nations, we have done all of this before, reasonably well.”

Tim Craig is The Post’s bureau chief in Pakistan. He has also covered
conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and within the District of Columbia government.

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